InFocus IN82 DLP Projector Review

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Review Price: £2999.00

InFocus really took the quality end of the affordable HD Ready projector market by storm with its highly rated IN78 and IN76 DLP offerings. And now it’s got its sights firmly set on the affordable full HD market too, with the £3,000 IN82.

Happily this 1,920 x 1,080 device adopts the same sort of styling as InFocus’s lower-end models. And so you get a glossy black finish wrapped around a very curvaceous body, with the main unit set upon a rotating, tilting ball joint to aid you in getting a picture from the projector onto your screen no matter how awkward your living room shape. The only difference between the IN82 and the IN76/78 aesthetically is that the IN82 is substantially bigger.

If we had any issue with the IN82’s design it would be that the ball joint we mentioned can be a bit fiddly to use, since it’s difficult to get the projector to tilt in small increments. But you always end up with your desired result in the end.

The IN82’s rear end plays host to a pair of digital video sockets for HD use, both of which are built to the v1.3 standard permitting compatibility with the much-vaunted but ne’er seen Deep Colour format. Whether any Deep Colour sources will ever appear is anyone’s guess, but we guess it’s still nice to have a projector that’s ready for them if they do.

You may have noticed that we didn’t just say ‘pair of HDMIs’ in the previous paragraph. This is because only one of the IN82’s digital video inputs is actually an HDMI; the other is an M1-DA type able to take pretty much any input, analogue or digital (including HDMI) via a suitable adaptor.

Other handy connections include two 12V triggers (one for driving an electronic screen, the other for adjusting screen aspect ratios), an RS232 port for system integration, and a component video input.

Setting the IN82 up is straightforward thanks to that ball joint and some sensibly organised onscreen menus. But you can also go pretty much as in-depth as you like, thanks to the inclusion of everything an Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) engineer would need to professionally calibrate the projector to suit the demands of your room and screen type.